The Odyssey, however, appears to offer a larger contribution towards our means of comprehending the Homeric use of Ἀχαιοὶ, than can be supplied by the mere citation of particular passages. _Its application within Ithaca._ There is considerable evidence of a division of races in Ithaca: and also of the application of the Achæan name to the aristocracy of the country. The length of time during which Ulysses had been absent, will account for much disorganization in his dominions: and their lying chiefly in separate insular possessions would tend to aggravate the evil. Still not only Nestor, Idomeneus[710], Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, but also Menelaus, who was absent almost as long as Ulysses himself, appear to have resumed their respective thrones without difficulty; so that we are led to suppose there must have been much peculiarity in the case of Ithaca. Part of this we may find in the fact, that the family of Ulysses may but recently have attained to power, and that the consolidation of races was imperfect. Besides his force of character, he had accumulated[711] great wealth, following in the footsteps of his father Laertes, who was both a conqueror and an economist[712]. His power, thus depending on what was personal to himself, could not but be shaken to its very base by his departure, and by his long detention in foreign parts. So far as we can learn from the text of Homer, the family of Ulysses had come, like the other Hellic families, from the north: and it had only reigned in Ithaca at most for two generations. His extraction is not stated further back than his paternal grandfather Arceisius[713]. But his connections all appear to be in the north. His maternal grandfather, Autolycus[714], lived by Parnesus, or Parnassus, in Phocis, near to Delphi. And his wife’s father, Icarius, had a daughter Iphthime, who was married to Eumelus[715], heir-apparent of Pheræ in the south of Thessaly: a circumstance which affords a presumption of proximity in their dominions. Thus it is probable that Laertes may have married in Thessaly; and, as we have no mention of the sovereignty of Arceisius, it is highly probable that Laertes was the first, either to acquire the Ithacan throne, or at least to hold it for any length of time. The fountain near the city, which supplied it with water, and which probably marks its foundation, was constructed, as we are told, by Ithacus, Neritus, and Polyctor[716]. The first must have been the Eponymist of the island: the second of its principal mountain[717].